Following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, the pope will publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds, the document will be sent to the world's 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners.

According to Vatican insiders, Francis will meet other faith leaders and lobby politicians at the general assembly in New York in September, when countries will sign up to new anti-poverty and environmental goals.

In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: "An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

For my own part, I think he's right in his reasoning to a point, but I hope that the dynamic power of capitalism can be turned to good purpose in addressing climate change. Like a knife, capitalism cuts what its edge is pointed at. Choose wisely your goals, and good tools will give good results. Capitalism doesn't have to be in charge of our goals, any more than a knife must cut whatever it's sharp enough to get through.

But yeah, if we make a god of money then things will not end well. Leaving aside the truth of the whole shebang of Catholicism, it ought to be clear that just by announcing that there are no other gods, Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, helps us steer clear of worshipping at false altars. Like money.

"Life as we live it today is filled with barriers that separate us," Mimo Khair says, "but when I'm in the street with my camera, I can connect to another person, and that for me is when the magic happens."

(The author owns the photos so you'll have to click through. Fair enough.) The Syrian refugee girl is the lone survivor of her family---and her watchword is "love". Heartbreaking story.

I'm told that this has been a bad couple of weeks for the anti-rape movement. "Rolling Stone just wrecked an incredible year of progress for rape victims," Arielle Duhaime-Ross wrote at the Verge last week. Since the magazine's November story about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity began to unravel early this month, feminists have raised alarms that the magazine's whiff will have devastating effects for past and future victims.

So writes the author. But she disagrees with what she's been told, and she's right. She continues:

At this point, it is clear that Rolling Stone failed to meet its basic journalistic requirements many times over. There is also compelling evidence that Jackie herself fabricated all or parts of her story. Neither of these scenarios serve to dismantle the anti-rape movement. Journalists have messed up reporting on rape since they began reporting on rape. In addition, there have been false rape allegations in the past, and there will be false allegations in the future. Any successful anti-rape activist or movement must be willing to accept that false accusations are not a "myth" and grapple with how to handle them appropriately. Whatever really happened at UVA one Saturday night in 2012 cannot possibly undermine a social justice movement because any understanding of justice must accommodate the truth.

Hear, hear.

(in the original, there are links given in support of the claims made in the text quoted.) You can read it all here.

He raised the ire of the White House in August as the administration was ramping up its strategy to fight the Islamic State, directly contradicting the president, who months before had likened the Sunni militant group to a junior varsity basketball squad. Mr. Hagel, facing reporters in his now-familiar role next to General Dempsey, called the Islamic State an "imminent threat to every interest we have," adding, "This is beyond anything that we've seen." White House officials later said they viewed those comments as unhelpful, although the administration still appears to be struggling to define just how large is the threat posed by the Islamic State.

Bad news comes suddenly and out of left field. Good news unfolds so slowly it can seem as though there isn't any. But on the timescales that really matter, today's cost of renewable energy is suddenly much lower than it was just a few years ago.

The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas.

Utility executives say the trend has accelerated this year, with several companies signing contracts, known as power purchase agreements, for solar or wind at prices below that of natural gas, especially in the Great Plains and Southwest, where wind and sunlight are abundant.

Utilities here and there are contracting for more wind because it's just plain cheaper than natural-gas driven. And more progress is surely in the works.

What I take from this? We're going to have a train wreck of a climate a century from now on any imaginable path. But there's wrecks and there's wrecks. The momentum of renewable energy has become unstoppable. We won't hit the high end worst case IPCC scenarios. We'll probably come in toward the low end.

Under the heading of "the stuff these people come up with", we have John L Casey's book Dark Winter. Breathlessly plugged by Newsmax, it posits that we're in for a 30 year cold spell.

His new book debunks global warming orthodoxy. For more than a decade, he reports, the planet's oceans have been cooling. And since 2007, the atmospheric temperature has been cooling as well.

"The data is pretty solid," Casey says. "If you look at the 100-year global temperature chart, you look at the steep drop-off we've had since 2007. It's the steepest drop in global temperatures in the last hundred years."

So how can the media and scientific elites make a case for global warming when it's actually cooling?

Casey suggests climate-change theorists have simply wedded themselves to the wrong theory -- namely, that global temperatures respond to the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

A doctor ordered treatment with painkillers, antibiotics, burn cream and cleaning of the blisters -- a sensation, the former sergeant said, "like a having a wire dog brush being rubbed across your leg."

Specialist Beasley's medical record shows that blood and urine specimens confirmed the mustard agent exposure. But the patients were not admitted to a hospital.

Mr. Lampier, then the soldiers' commander, said he argued that they should be evacuated to the United States. "They were raw meat trying to heal in the worst environment imaginable," he said. "There was dust and ash and smoke from the burn pits, and they had these wounds that shouldn't have been exposed to that."

The soldiers remained outpatients at a clinic.

Secrecy prevailed. Victims said word of their exposure was purposefully squelched.

All the while secrecy prevailed. The military determined the soldiers had been burned by an M110 shell. Both victims said word of their exposure was purposefully squelched.

"We were absolutely told not to talk about it" by a colonel, the former sergeant said. The order, he added, included prohibitions against mentioning mustard agent when writing home.

The secrecy was so extensive that Dr. Lounsbury said he suspected officials hid the cases even from him and two other Army doctors assigned to prepare an official textbook on treating battlefield wounds.

Lacking time to assimilate this, all I can do is bring it up. But it's more than scandalous.

(Reuters) - The Ferguson, Missouri police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager has ignited weeks of protests testified Tuesday before a St. Louis grand jury hearing evidence in the case, according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Darren Wilson, who has been in hiding since the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, spent nearly four hours telling his version of events to the 12 members of the grand jury who are weighing possible charges against him, the newspaper said on Wednesday, citing a source.

The proceedings of a grand jury are closed to the public and the prosecutor's office would not confirm the report.

I'm not surprised that the grand jury is looking at the case. I'm not surprised that Wilson is available to the grand jury.

The Day Ferguson Cops Were Caught in a Bloody LieThe officers got the wrong man, but charged him anyway--with getting his blood on their uniforms. How the Ferguson PD ran the town where Michael Brown was gunned down.

Police in Ferguson, Missouri, once charged a man with destruction of property for bleeding on their uniforms while four of them allegedly beat him.

"On and/or about the 20th day of Sept. 20, 2009 at or near 222 S. Florissant within the corporate limits of Ferguson, Missouri, the above named defendant did then and there unlawfully commit the offense of 'property damage' to wit did transfer blood to the uniform," reads the charge sheet.

The address is the headquarters of the Ferguson Police Department, where a 52-year-old welder named Henry Davis was taken in the predawn hours on that date. He had been arrested for an outstanding warrant that proved to actually be for another man of the same surname, but a different middle name and Social Security number.

"I said, 'I told you guys it wasn't me,'" Davis later testified.

The story of the police testimony at the trial would be slapstick comedy if it weren't so serious.

Portion of transcript:

"After Mr. Davis was detained, did you have any blood on you?" asked Davis' lawyer, James Schottel.

"No, sir," Beaird replied.

Schottel showed Beaird a copy of the "property damage" complaint.

"Is that your signature as complainant?" the lawyer asked.

"It is, sir," the cop said.

"And what do you allege that Mr. Davis did unlawfully in this one?" the lawyer asked.

"Transferred blood to my uniform while Davis was resisting," the cop said.

"And didn't I ask you earlier in this deposition if Mr. Davis got blood on your uniform?"

Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway, retiring Monday after accusations of fraudulent personal real estate dealings, now faces a federal bank fraud charge for allegedly transferring a home she owned in Florida to allow for the short sale of her home in Grosse Pointe Park.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit Friday alleges Hathaway fraudulently transferred the real estate to others before telling financial institution ING Direct she needed to sell her Grosse Pointe Park home by short sale because she couldn't afford the house payments.

70 turbines, 160 megawatts output on a good day. Nice, but not huge. It helps that Texas is the home of blowhards and hot air. :-) (The business-friendly state government doesn't hurt.)

Wind-energy subsidies amount to (I would say "just") 2.2 cents per kwh, and that, for only the first 10 years of operation. It's heartening that the gap between the market cost of wind energy and conventional is so little that 2.2 cents will bridge the gap.

This is a book that reports a number of not-well-known facts, and offers some suggestions about what to do. The book has its technical side, but most of the detailed proofs and evidence have been cached at the book's web site.

The authors are a former Chicago community organizer and civil rights activist turned UCLA law professor, and a former NYT Supreme Court reporter who is now a fellow of the Brookings institute.

The key facts are that

(1) The best predictors of success in college are standardized test scores and grades. (Call a weighted combination of these your "academic index".) Holistic factors don't trump these. Standardized test scores are valid predictors for Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian alike. Grades too, though with grades, one may need to take into account whether the school awarding the grades grades hard or easy.

(2) Most selective universities use racial preferences when deciding on admissions, and use them with a fairly heavy hand. There is a "cascade effect" in which schools at the top enroll most of the students who would be a good fit for the next tier of schools, and those enroll most of those who would be a good fit for the next tier down, and so on.

(3) There is a considerable "test score gap" situation. The average score on the SAT or the ACT, average grades, etc. run lower for Blacks than for Whites, who in turn run lower than Asians.

(4) Students generally learn best when they're in classes pitched to their own level. If you're a good student with a lot of ability, but you're put into a fast-paced course aimed at honors students with finely honed skills and exceptional talent, you'll learn less from that class than you would have learned from a class aimed at students like you, students who want to learn and have the ability, but need more guidance and more approachable homework assignments.

So it's not a good thing to be admitted to a school where most of the students have a considerably higher academic index. Your chances of staying in school, completing your intended major, and passing gateway tests into a profession are all improved by attending a school where your academic index is roughly equivalent to that of most of your peers.

In other words, large racial preferences in admissions hurt the students who get them.

Special attention is given in the book to the most clear cut cases of this: law school, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.) One particularly telling analysis deals with how things played out before and after Prop 209 came into force in California.

This proposition outlawed racial preferences in admission to the University of California schools. For a while after it was passed, the law was to some extent observed. During this span of time, Black admissions to the most selective schools in the UC system fell. But graduation rates improved, and the absolute number of Black students completing their degrees from those schools rose. These results were in perfect alignment with the analysis given by one of the authors before the event, and in sharp contradiction to the predictions of most others.

When it comes to law school, academic index is the key predictor of success in law school. In turn, success in law school, as evidenced by good grades, and then, secondarily, as evidenced by the quality of the school, is the key predictor of success at passing the bar and then success in the profession.

In other words, these indices and grades are valid predictors.

Again, when it comes to law school, students who attend a school at which their academic index is comparable to the bulk of their peers learn more, in absolute terms, and are more likely to pass the bar and succeed in the profession, than students with the same academic index who attend a school for which their scores indicate they are mismatched.

It is, in short, a bad thing for the student to get a large racial (or legacy, or athletic) preference and be admitted to a law school where the courses will be pitched over their head.

Now, as to suggested solutions:

First, it would be nice to improve K-12 education. A test-score gap is apparent even at the start of K, but it grows over time and the problem of that growth is something the schools can address. There are schools that do far better with Black students than the typical public school, among them, some at which Black students outscore the White average. So, it can be done. These schools do not enjoy superior funding. They do enjoy superior teachers and superior student discipline. They do not cherry pick students for high prior grades or standardized test scores.

If it were possible to dismiss substantially below-average teachers, to attract and retain (with targeted raises) substantially above-average teachers, to expel intolerably disruptive students, and to shift into special, separate, classes students who have disabilities that prevent them from coping with mainstream K-12 instruction, then we could expect that the K-12 gap in public school results would at any rate narrow as it has in these charter schools, Kipp academies, and so on.

Second, and because narrowing the gap is a long term project, it would be good to at a minimum inform prospective students of the extent of the racial preference in admissions they are being offered (if any) and of the range of outcomes and odds of success for previously admitted students who got that level of admissions preference and who have already completed, or failed to complete, their studies at that school. In other words, schools should be required by law to be transparent in the way they use preferences and in the outcomes that result.

The authors also recommend that racial preferences be limited to no more than the SES preference, if any, that a school uses in deciding on admissions. They reject the idea of outright bans on racial preference in admissions, partly because experience has taught that such bans can always be circumvented. Partly, also, because a straight preference generates less of a mismatch problem than circumventions that achieve the same intended preferential effect.

When the press reported that Adam Lanza had Asperger's syndrome (part of the autism spectrum disorders) and other unspecified personality problems, the autism community swung into action in a way that is totally understandable. The Associated Press' headline: "Experts: No Link Between Asperger's, Violence."

The vast majority of autistic people are not violent. Autistics like Temple Grandin, the professor who helped create humane strategies for the meat industry, remind us that many people with high-functioning also go on to live full, rich lives of value to themselves and others.

Grandin also reminded us that, for austic people, "The principal emotion experienced by autistic people is fear.

If you cannot read people's social cues, it's hard to tell who is a threat and who is not. If you live in a world with social rules created by "neurotypicals" that make no sense, anxiety and fear are natural, perhaps inevitable, responses.

But the suggestion that science has demonstrated there is no link at all between autism and aggressive violence is questionable.

Google "autism" and "aggression" and you will suddenly be treated to a counter world the formal autism community claims does not exist: desperate mothers seeking help or respite from the violent behavior of large, aggressive, beloved autistic boys (and a few girls).

In the name of love and absent decent institutions for these troubled young adults, we are permitting a silent epidemic of domestic terrorism against women that we would not tolerate under any other banner.

And there is more, including accounts of research that is all too consonant with the anecdotes found in the article.

Slightly off topic, the climber and author Jon Krakauer, "Into Thin Air", in another of his books describes the sight of a glacier when he briefly took his silvered sunglasses off to see what it really looked like in direct sunlight: "Ka-wow".

This very scene occurs later in the fictional series Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, by the Robinsons. One of the characters takes off sunglasses on a glacier and says that.

According to new research by the University of Delaware and Delaware Technical Community College, a combination of wind power, solar and storage in batteries and fuel cells could fully power a large electric grid 99.9 percent of the time by 2030. And it could be done at costs comparable to today's electricity expenses. Here are the details. [[snip]]

* What the researchers found is that generating more electricity than needed during average hours would be cheaper than storing excess power for later high demand.

This gets around the apparent need for storage, which is emerging as a stumbling block. The wind does not always blow, the sun, shine through a cloudless sky. So there will always be the possibility of a cloudy, still day over much of the nation. When that happens, I guess we just light up the backup, natural-gas driven generators.

The article recounts an item from the report it references, observing that in the normal course of events, capital costs for wind and solar will probably be half what they are today by 2030.

Op-ed: His father praised Hitler, but Kasim Hafeez writes about love for Israel, Jewish people

Kasim HafeezPublished: 04.25.12, 17:27 / Israel Opinion

I am a Zionist, a proud Muslim Zionist, and I love Israel, but this was not always the case. In fact, for many years I was quite the extreme opposite. I experienced the high levels of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity taking place on British university campuses, because I was the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activist.

Growing up in the Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials and opinions at best condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers, SNIP So what changed? How could I go from all this hatred to the great love for and affinity with Israel and the Jewish people? I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section of a local bookstore and picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel. Given my worldview, the Jews and Americans controlled the media, so after brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda."

I did, however, decide to buy it, content that I would shortly be deconstructing

HOUSTON (AP) — Four top leaders of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood of Texas are among nearly three dozen alleged gang members charged in a sweeping indictment unsealed Friday that accuses them of crimes ranging from capital murder to drug trafficking.

Few details were released about the alleged crimes, but 10 defendants are facing charges that carry a death penalty. As examples of the gang's brutality, the indictment says one leader ordered a subordinate to kill a gang prospect and return his severed finger, and another was told to burn a tattoo from a member's arm for not following an order.

"Brutal beatings, fire bombings, drug trafficking and murder are all part of ABT's alleged standard operating procedure," Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breurer said in a statement. "As charged, ABT uses violence and threats of violence to maintain internal discipline and to retaliate against those believed to be cooperating with law enforcement."

Only three people named in the indictment haven't been arrested. Sixteen people were arrested Friday across Texas, while 15 others were already in custody, prosecutors said, adding that the arrests capped years of investigation.

All are charged with racketeering conspiracy. Some were charged with involvement in at least three murders, multiple attempted murders, kidnappings, assaults and conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine.

It goes on and on.

But now it stops.

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/289115_Why_we_still_need_the_death_pe#rssSat, 10 Nov 2012 22:56:51 PSTCrimeVladimir Putin had the idea first for a first-time adlostlakehikerDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

Should the first time be for love? But of course, says a new video released by supporters of Vladimir Putin.

A suggestive ad rallying support for Putin's presidential campaign shows a young woman seeking a fortune-teller's advice. "Let's find out, cutie, who is intended to you by destiny," the mystic says. The girl replies, "You know. I wish it to be for love -- It is my first time."

All indications suggest that the woman is nervous about losing her virginity, but the ad's horrifying twist is revealed when the fortune-teller flips a card with a portrait of the Russian Prime Minister.

AFP reports that the clip is part of series made by advertising agency Aldus ADV. The agency said it conceptualized the clips "with the aim of attracting a young audience to take part" in Russia's upcoming elections. AFP adds that the company did not say who ordered the clips.

This is in rebuttal to the charge made in this forum that Republicans would nominate Vladimir Putin if it were possible. In reality, neither party has a Putin, and neither would do that. But the irony is just too rich.

'Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.... We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.'

— Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on CBS's 'Face the Nation,' Sept. 16

Witnesses tell CBS News that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate. Instead they say it came under planned attack. That is in direct contradiction to the administration's account.'

Washington Post ArticleAnd there you have it. The article itself includes much more detail. But these things are now a matter of public record. The key point is the report by CBS. CBS is not an arm of the Republican party.

The sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has melted to its smallest point ever in a milestone that may show that worst-case forecasts on climate change are coming true, US scientists said.

The extent of ice observed on Sunday broke a record set in 2007 and will likely melt further with several weeks of summer still to come, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the NASA space agency.

The government-backed ice center, based at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said in a statement that the decline in summer Arctic sea ice "is considered a strong signal of long-term climate warming."

The sea ice fell to 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles), some 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles) less than the earlier record charted on September 18, 2007, the center said.

Scientists said the record was all the more striking as 2007 had near perfect climate patterns for melting ice, but that the weather this year was unremarkable other than a storm in early August.

Michael E. Mann, a lead author of a major UN report in 2001 on climate change, said the latest data reflected that scientists who were criticized as alarmists may have shown "perhaps too great a degree of reticence."

"I think, unfortunately, this is an example that points more to the worst-case scenario side of things," said Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.

"There are a number of areas where in fact climate change seems to be proceeding faster and with a greater magnitude than what the models predicted," Mann told AFP.

"The sea ice decline is perhaps the most profound of those cautionary tales because the models have basically predicted that we shouldn't see what we're seeing now for several decades," he added.

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/284139_Scientists_get_it_wrong_again_#rssMon, 03 Sep 2012 14:56:35 PDTScienceIf the only way out is escape, how can it be legal?lostlakehikerDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

One of the wives of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, has escaped the confines of the isolated Arizona community where his 85 other wives live.

Arizona authorities have said that the 25-year-old woman who fled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which was led by Jeffs, is now undergoing counseling and psychiatric care at a women's shelter. She was reportedly barefoot when she was found.

Some prisons are easier to get out of than this cult. What's stopping the law from stepping in?

The recent book "Reckless Endangerment", by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, documents how Jim Johnson, head of Fannie Mae, profited from the gap between what private mortgage lenders had to pay for funds, and what the government-backed Fannie Mae had to pay. Fannie Mae, and Johnson, kept back about 1/3 of this government subsidy, passing only 2/3 of the subsidy on to borrowers in the form of lower interest rates. The 1/3 cut was then spread around. Some stuck to Johnson and the rest of the management team. A lot of it was spent on advertising. A lot was spent on charity, most of that very strategic. A lot was spent, ultimately, on campaign contributions in favor of friends and against enemies. And a lot of it was spent on lobbying. Some of it was even spent to simply take out campaign ads against a candidate Fannie didn't like. This, be reminded, was federal tax money.

There's an honor roll, too, of public servants and others who warned against easy credit to borrowers whose income would make it not only not easy, but well nigh impossible, to make the payments on the properties they would be buying.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, and Marvin Phaup and June O'Neill of the CBO, at the top of this much, sadly, shorter list.

How do Stiglitz and Orszag make this list? "The probability of a shock so severe as embodied in the risk-based capital standard is substantially less than one in 500,000---and may be smaller than one in three million," they wrote, in an academic paper. The reality, of course, was that the probability was much closer to 1. The shock happened. Now being wrong isn't necessarily dishonorable, but being wrong so badly, when you know enough to know better, does raise suspicions.

How does Phaup make the honor roll? He led the charge at the CBO to point out that Fannie was the beneficiary of this huge subsidy. June O'Neill, then his superior, backed him. Johnson floated rumors that Phaup was insane. They didn't work.

But in the end, Fannie was allowed to go on running huge risks, betting the farm. Fannie also served as a roll model. Countrywide Financial, Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG---they bet their farms too. And lost. When, inevitably, borrowers both rich and poor defaulted (for the practice of lending too much can be profitably pursued on a larger scale if the borrower borrows big, always assuming that chickens never will come home to roost), the whole house of cards collapsed. And here we are.

Phaup's take, years later, on the upshot? In 2008, he wrote: "Now we have created a whole new generation of government sponsored entities with implied federal guarantees. The cancer isn't gone---now it has metastasized."